White Lies
by Xyliette
Summary: Cristina finds help in an unconventional friend. Mark/Cristina.


~-~-~-~-~-~

White Lies

- Spider Silk Dress  
~-~-~-~-~-~

"You're all happy now," Cristina accuses, washing down another half glass of tequila as Meredith elegantly trips over the living room rug displaying the great abilities of her drinking history.

"You're happy too," Meredith reminds her sloppily, prancing into the kitchen for another bottle.

"Yeah," Cristina mumbles to herself, the distinct ache of fear looming overhead.

She's content, and it's far from the position of happily ever after that her friend seems to have embraced.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Owen has her pressed against a thin wall, nipping at her neck, and Cristina finds herself drifting away. Half the fun is chasing him, working for his affection, letting him work for hers.

It's not amusing anymore, the way he holds back (unwilling, he reminds her at every turn), and she yearns desperately for the whole hearted giving that Burke used to smother her with.

Two opposite ends, and she's dripping, torn apart by her inability to be satisfied with nothing more than a fuck buddy, her yearning for something magnificent to come home to after a day plagued with the injuries and suffocating smell of death that she'll never admit pile heavily on her soul.

~-~-~-~-~-~

"We could all go out," Derek offers, giddy about the holidays, and annoying Cristina to no end as he dances around the Christmas tree, perfect little sculpted jewels hanging perilously from the drying branches. His eggnog sloshes in its cup, begging to pour onto the floor.

"I don't think so-"

"Cristina, just because you don't celebrate Christmas doesn't mean we don't want you here," Meredith says seriously, and Cristina yearns to grab her neck and hold tightly, shaking her out of this fog and back into the dark and twisty that doesn't make plans, doesn't get mushy and sentimental. It doesn't fit her properly, she's wearing a Derek sized coat, swimming in his delusions.

"Owen is going to visit his mother, and I'm on call," Cristina answers sufficiently, and even though it's the absolute truth, it feels like a lie.

"Later then," Meredith offers, her husband's arm wrapping around her. "Dinner or something, we'll get Izzie to cook."

"Fine," Cristina submits, mind spinning wet cobwebs on ways to get out of this one.

She wants her menorah in the windowsill, yearns for that stupid little Christmas tree that Burke decorated. It was untraditional and she flourished there, under his impatience. And even when she doesn't miss him in the slightest, when she wishes him dead, she still desires the screwed up manner in which they operated, the very same thing that destroyed them.

~-~-~-~-~-~

"Damn it," Cristina says loudly, scrambling to the floor, picking up all of the things that fell out of her pockets.

"Got enough shit Yang?" Mark Sloan wonders aloud, admiring the same way she flutters across the shiny tiles with an elegance he never would've imagined she'd have. She skitters, hovers, it's entrancing.

"Just watch where you're walking," Cristina mumbles, accidentally spilling her coffee onto the papers she was scraping up. Suddenly, Mark's tennis shoe slams down in front of her trained fingers, squashing her pile like an escaped bug. "What the he-"

"It's ruined," Mark explains, bending over, his breath rising over her red ears, humming with energy. "We'll just ask Debbie for new copies."

"I have to be in surgery in ten minutes, Teddy-"

"What kind of a name is Teddy?" Mark asks, trashing the sopping pile of illegible scratches.

"I don't- who cares?" Cristina fights, her day at an absolute worst. She's being clumsy, removed from the controlled, knowledgeable surgeon she normally is.

And now she's running late, and this jackass is asking stupid questions.

She's never late.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Her feet are mindless, operating of their own volition, shuffling forward. Blood cakes her scrubs as she ambles on, toward the locker room, the events of the past seven hours running in constant loop.

She has killed her first patient. She was so certain she would never be a statistic.

"Cristina?" Owen Hunt calls out, his girlfriend pale as a sheet, floating along her journey.

Cut, clamp, repair. It was so fucking simple, she's done it a hundred times, nay a thousand. And yet there's a dead man a few yards back, her voice echoing down the hall, chasing her like a ghost. "Time of death 19:53."

~-~-~-~-~-~

"Ugh," Cristina groans to herself, wet hair creating a river of water down her new scrubs. She ties it back, the tails whipping freely in the empty room, droplets splattering along the wooden bench beneath her. A slippery puddle collects beneath her well worn shoes.

Before she can berate herself any further, before her mind can complete the mental scouring of that scattered chart for something she missed in pre-op, she readies herself to face the family.

Teddy offered, because she's Teddy, but Cristina knows this is her job.

This is her fault.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Usually her dealings with Mark Sloan involve a quick cursory glance, a once over before turning her heel and marching forward with her day. He's pretty, too pretty for her liking, and he seems to reside on the surface of being exactly what everyone expects him to be, so she's relatively surprised when he slides down the bumpy wall she's lounging against and offers her a sip of his cappuccino.

"What do you want?" Cristina sneers, because no one is going to sit here out of pity, out of duty. She's a big girl, she'll handle this and the last thing she wants is to be coddled. If she did, she'd run crying to Owen, and he'd know just what to do. But there's a dysfunctional disconnect between those actions because she can't seem to get her ass off the floor, even when Bailey glares knowingly.

Her boss can shove it, she's not here to save lives anymore.

"Fourth year," Mark says softly. "Her name was Ellen. She was a mother, a daughter, a wife."

"We aren't friends," Cristina retorts. Does she look like the person to share sob stories with?

"And you're not invincible," Mark tells her, standing back up.

He's gone before she can even glance up, his coffee abandoned, the heat spreading to her flexed knees.

~-~-~-~-~-~

The statement ricochets off her throat, bouncing through her mind like a pinball, until she can't take it anymore.

Somehow she winds up against the side of the xerox machine, scrubs around her ankles, fingers jamming against keys that squeal as Mark Sloan pounds into her, finding a balance of pleasure and pain she hasn't experienced in years. She white knuckles the start button as she explodes, dragging him down into her world of despair.

They dress silently, but she notices him watching her curves as they disappear.

It's not much, but it helps.

~-~-~-~-~-~

"Dinner?" Mark offers hopefully, after he's positive that Cristina Yang has been sneaking peeks all week. Derek was wrong, as he so often is. She's more of a tequila. You feel like shit in the morning, but it's just too damn alluring to resist.

And perhaps because she's hit her limit, or because Teddy is insisting that she get back in the saddle today when all she wants to do is watch over the reigns, she says yes, and quickly comes up with a harmless story to tell her boyfriend before realizing that it's Christmas Eve and he's going to be busy with the family she decided it was too soon to meet.

She briefly wonders what Lexipedia is doing, her heart trying to feel sympathy, guilt, but it all amounts to empty space.

~-~-~-~-~-~

"You speak French?" Cristina asks, attempting to pretend she's unimpressed after the waiter dashes away to place their order, his name rolling off Mark's tongue like he must have studied the language for years (as she did). Châteaubriand for two, mushroom caps, tomato crowns, and a generous helping of mashed potatoes. Thickly sliced onion rings with red curry ketchup currently occupying her astonishingly nervous fingers.

This is a mistake of epic proportions, but it feels calm, right in her gut.

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" Mark grins stupidly, drowning in the menu again when she rolls her eyes. The conversation is stunted by their lack of knowledge about one another, and it's inherently awkward, but as the wine flows into their blood it wains, coursing into studies, families, life events.

The things they never share with anyone else, they toss freely across the table, the implication not settling on either.

"Good," Cristina almost grunts at her food, dipping her ring again, slurping the sauce hungrily.

"My favorite place in town, reminds me of home," Mark admits, finding it odd how easy it is to talk to her. It's like she can see through all his bullshit, the careful, clever costume he wears. There's no point in dashing across the stage acting like he's something else.

~-~-~-~-~-~

"There's a lot of finesse involved," Mark preaches proudly, speaking of his craft. "If you screw up even a little-"

"Then Cindy Lou Who gets a crooked rack," Cristina laughs, alcohol flushing through the crevices in her teeth, her stomach full and heavy from a wonderful dinner. Mark eats like a man, not the bullshit health crap that has invaded Meredith's cupboards lately. And he can't cook, so they have something in common to hang their hats on. "I wish I could just skip past this nonsense, my specialty is cardio-"

"You'd be surprised how many people change focuses," Mark chimes in.

"You think I'll change?" Cristina challenges.

"Nah," Mark sighs. She's the same old robot she was when he met her, she just has a few nicks and gashes in her tin armor now.

Cristina finds herself smiling at the manwhore across the table who already has her panties in a twist. He's good, he knows what he wants, and exactly how to get it.

She envies that, misses her old take it all self.

~-~-~-~-~-~

Because his significant other has invaded his apartment, and his self-acknowledged spacey daughter is on the couch, and because Cristina is never sure when someone will come busting down her door, they end up fucking in the parking lot like teenagers hiding from the whole of society.

He's rougher than before, more urgent, almost ripping her clothes off. And it's the excitement that swishes through the air, the dust of something new sparkling, that has her toes dancing along the car ride home.

The elevator serves as only a place to sneak a few ill-advised kisses, her hand groping him because she can.

She has no idea what's happening, but Mark is the checkmate to the culmination of a clusterfuck week, building only in intensity and incompetence. It'll all implode eventually, and she'll convince the world she came out unscathed (and never ever indulge in the gossip that she was with him), but for now it is exactly what she needs to keep breathing, to keep pursuing her dreams, the hopes that keep trying to slide down her throat.

"Do we, should we-"

"No," Cristina answers for him resolutely.

"Well, Merry Christmas," Mark says, looking down at his watch. He used to be better at this.

"Yeah," Cristina replies, not bothering to impart upon him that the holiday doesn't exist in her world.

She's going to climb into bed, and she'll wake up in Owen's tight embrace. Then she'll attend Meredith's stupid little dinner and Owen will wow everyone with his guitar as she tries to not pull out her hair in the corner. And she doesn't care if he spends the next four hours screwing Lexie lovingly, caressing the areas that he scratched onto her skin earlier in the night. It's none of her damn business.

They aren't friends.

~-~-~-~-~-~


End file.
